


pattern recognition

by angularmomentum



Series: #dirtbags [6]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic), Hockey RPF
Genre: Accidental Marriage, Excessive Drinking, M/M, Multi, Road Trip, a boob-shaped pool floatie, boner jokes, the tender and heartfelt conclusion this series did not need or deserve, yes friends you read that right
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-01
Updated: 2017-09-01
Packaged: 2018-12-22 14:42:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11969520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angularmomentum/pseuds/angularmomentum
Summary: Sometimes a family is a bro, another bro, their bros, and maybe some pets.Or: kent parson makes an unfortunate discovery





	pattern recognition

**Author's Note:**

> to the twelve of you who will read this: "don't @ me" holds for the whole series.

-

Las Vegas

-

“I quit.”

Kent, half asleep with his chin propped on the kitchen table and a mug of coffee more or less in reach of his limp arm, has to work harder than he really wants to in order to focus on human words. It’s the offseason. He’s tired. He’s only just gotten back from a charity thing at the MGM and isn’t ready to make words yet. “What?”

“Kent. Kotenok. I retiring. I tell you last time, also.”

Kent forces himself to focus on Zenaida, who is now standing right in front of him, nudging his coffee closer to his hand before she sits down at the table with a cup of her own. “You… why?”

Zenaida just looks at him, both drawn-on eyebrows climbing her deeply wrinkled forehead. Kent drinks some coffee to give himself time to respond, because all that wants to come out of him is a primal moan of utter despair. Kent has, in previous years, thought nothing of holding a kegger and asking Zenaida to take care of the damage, much like crime scene cleaning services who come in to clean the aftermath of bloody murders. Once, when he was too young to be hosting ragers, he sort of vaguely remembers her turning him into the recovery position on the bathroom floor to clean around him and kindly draping a cool towel over his face. He’s pretty sure she’s changed his shirt once or twice. She is literally invaluable to him; he’s been paying her anything she asks for since he was nineteen, and considering it a bargain.

“Do you have to?” Kent asks, aware that he’s begging.

“Yes,” she says, patiently. “I too old for you. You need younger people. Maybe five, six people. I give you card, but you ask nice, people here, they know house. They know you.”

“But you’re not that old, you’re like…” Kent attempts to come up with a figure.

“You gave guess?”

“…Fifty?”

“I seventy-two,” Zenaida informs him sharply. “And my bones are tired.” Zenaida heaves herself around the table like a five-foot battleship and grabs him by the face. Her rough palms are very warm against his cheeks. “Remember what I teach you?”

“Don’t throw socks away just because they’re dirty?”

“Good boy,” she says, looking very seriously down at him.

“What about Kit?” Kent asks, wondering belatedly where she is. It’s only seven in the morning, it’s too early for this to be happening.

“She cat, she okay.” She claps him bracingly on both cheeks before she picks up the rest of her coffee to down it. “I quit. Be good.”

The door closes quietly. “Well, fuck.”

-

Sometime around when Kent moved to Las Vegas, he bought a house. It is a really fucking nice house.

Kent, in his life, has faced significant challenges; he’s from a single parent family and hasn’t seen said parent in about five years. He once swallowed a whole slice of lime and thought he was going to be found decomposed on his kitchen floor and that his obituary would list his cause of death as a fatal tequila accident. Someone who shall remain nameless (actually, fuck it, it was Sidney, the motherfucker) once slashed him so hard he broke three of his fingers, and Kent had the rest of the playoffs to go. He spent the bulk of his teenage years in Quebec. He tells everyone he’s five-ten, but he’s only five-eight and a half. His butt doesn’t fit in off-the-rack jeans.

The offseason sucks because there’s no hockey and everyone is away, and Kent hasn’t been back to New York unless it’s to play the Rangers, the Islanders or the Sabres since he was a teenager. Aside from working out and getting laid, his summers are mostly comprised of last-minute jaunts to random places and the occasional enjoyable blackout.

Sometimes he does promotion or runs into Seguin whenever they have to do one of those crushingly awkward videos on Instagram in which Kent has to pretend he and Tyler ever do anything in Dallas but make out until Tyler gets bored and falls asleep on a deck chair. Sometimes he ends up haranguing Claude into visiting.

Right now Kent is a little too strung out to really think about anything but the moment, and all he can feel is the echoing emptiness of his oversized mansion, bought with his fuck-you money that feels a lot less victorious with just him in it right this second. The house itself is evidence of Kent’s nascent adulthood in a very obvious and not at all subtle way, but last year’s rookie is back in Finland for the summer and now Zenaida is gone too, the one longstanding constant of his headlong slide towards self-sufficiency.

Kent’s first impulse when Zenaida quits is to call Claude, which he immediately puts paid to by sending him a snapchat video of Kit licking her privates. _She’s bored. When is hockey back?_

_Aren’t you supposed to be in Dallas?_ Claude sends back, laid over a picture of his obnoxious infinity pool. Wayne Simmonds is in it, looking toned and tall and giving Kent the finger.

Kent gives in and calls him. “That was last week. I can’t believe it’s only July.”

“It’s August.”

“Why is Wayne in your pool?”

Claude chuckles, infuriatingly. “Because Ottawa is better than Toronto.”

“Hey!” Wayne yells in the background.

“It is,” Claude tells Kent, and also presumably Wayne. “You just get in?”

“It’s seven-thirty in the morning,” Kent says, amused. “Who do you think I am?”

“Hey Simmer, is Parse a slut? You’re on speaker.”

Kent hears splashing, then, from a distance: “Bro, come on, that’s a loaded question.”

“I’m hanging up,” Kent threatens.

Claude huffs. “What happened?”

Kent looks around his kitchen. It is pristine, probably for the last time in its elegant and completely under-utilised life. “Nothing,” he lies. “I’m bored.”

“Go jerk off, then,” Claude suggests.

Kent is still wearing a tux, so he figures he might as well. Oddly, he feels better about it, inexplicable sadness of Zenaida’s departure staved off by the enjoyable sound of Claude sucking in a breath around his teeth when Kent begins to take his advice without hanging up.

Claude curses and cuts off the call, which makes Kent laugh enough to really save the whole morning.

-

The thing that Kent never expected about having a house when he bought it is how easy it is to fill it. For someone who spent the entirety of his teenage years living out of a hockey bag he’s accumulated a surprising amount of stuff.

He’s got souvenirs from the NHL awards have absolutely nothing to do with hockey at all. He’s got some rings from those Stanley Cups he won those times. He’s got a collection of fancy vodka he keeps mostly to give to other people, because he’d always rather drink tequila when given a choice.

He’s got a wine collection Clara started for him that he adds bottles to sometimes, and one of Claude’s old Canada helmets he stole somewhere along the way on the mantle that he never explains to anyone.

He’s got a lot of joke gifts that have become things he actually uses, like the fancy blender and the slip’n’slide Jeff got him for his twenty-first birthday.

He’s also got a lot of junk he never looks at, relics from Juniors and Olympic uniforms he doesn’t like to think about. He’s got rooms of stuff people have left that Zenaida has been asking to throw out.

Kent has always liked a challenge. It’s how he got Tavares into the showers that one time, and how he managed to get himself backstage for Britney before he was even famous. Kent is also bored and restless, so he decides to dedicate himself to something he has never previously felt any need to do, and that is cleaning his house.

-

Kent works methodically.

The next morning he makes himself a Bloody Maria with what’s left of the Patron, throws his tux on the laundry pile that he will eventually have to deal with, rolls up his sleeves and gets to work.

By the end of the day he’s found, in roughly congruent order: someone else’s sex toys (which might tell him a lot more about his last rookie’s interests than he needed to know) a fireman’s uniform, a pair of police-issue handcuffs, six costumes for a cat he definitely has no memory of buying and a stack of polaroids in his desk drawer of the guys in his back porch, all of them displaying various missing teeth.

Jeff’s front four have been gone since 2011, so that might date the photos. It’s weird to feel like a detective in his own house, but on the other hand, this must be what it’s like to do a spring cleaning declutter he hears people talking about sometimes. He can’t decide if it feels good or not, but he’s sort of leaning towards satisfaction.

He’s found his own duplicate hockey jerseys, someone’s yoga pants that he has now adopted as his own, and a handheld vacuum that works far too well. His Instagram is full of pictures of his discoveries and he’s having a pretty interesting time until he encounters the second floor hall closet.

Kent stares at it for a while before he sighs, gives it the finger and downs the rest of his second “breakfast.”

It might be early afternoon, but Kent lost track of time somewhere around the third guest bedroom. He drops the vacuum as a placeholder and goes to see if anyone wants to come over.

The most valuable lesson he ever learned was that breaks are as important as exertion when it comes to endurance training.

-

“Are those yoga pants?” Jeff asks, handing Kent three-year-old Max while Clara unloads their newest addition, Maya, now clocking in at a hefty four months.

Max smacks Kent in the face in a bid to steal his hat. Kent gives it to him. It’s hot out, kid probably needs it more.

“They’re comfortable,” Kent says, tightening the band of the snapback while Max yells “no, Kenny, still too big!” and tries to help.

“Not that it isn’t nice to see you,” Clara says, carseat now mysteriously converted into a baby carrier, “but you look like you haven’t slept in weeks. You okay?”

“Hey, first of all—”

Max settles the hat on his head to his exact specifications, then starts wriggling, attempting to climb on Kent’s shoulders.

Kent holds him out to arm’s length so he can look him in the eye. “Hey bud, I think it’s time for the pool, what do you say?”

“I don’t wanna get my nose wet,” Max declares, very seriously.

“Me either,” Kent says, before Jeff glares at him. “What? It’s not like he knows what it means.”

“Never have children.” Jeff grabs the back of his neck in that bro way Kent used to think was aggressive while Clara laughs at him, her huge sunglasses reflecting Kent’s image back at him. The yoga pants look great, Jeff can fuck right off.

“Well it’s not gonna happen by accident,” Kent gripes.

-

Kent installs them by the pool under the awning and goes inside for more drinks.

Clara corners him while he’s leaning into the freezer, looking for ice cubes. “Kent,” she says ominously. He yelps and drops the whole tray. True to form, the cubes all stay stubbornly stuck in their little segments. Clara sighs and gives them back to him. “Listen, not that we don’t love it when you wait on us—”

“I do not wait—”

“You made me virgin sangria. You’re about to order sushi, aren’t you?”

Kent does his best to move in front of the takeout menu with everyone’s preferences marked next to specific items he’s taped to the fridge. “No. You can eat chips like everyone else.” He gives her the ice cubes. “Here, you can ice your own juice, too.”

“Thank you.” She takes them, twisting the tray and freeing them all with a flick of her wrist. As if Kent needed more evidence that she’s a witch. She already kind of looks like one, but in a hot way. Not the hag kind, the kind that has perfect skin and terrifying nails. She looks around, big brown eyes suspicious. “Something looks different. What’s going on?”

“Zenaida quit. I’m cleaning. Wait, you don’t follow me on Instagram?”

Clara stares at him. “Zenaida _quit_? What did you do?”

“I— nothing, she retired!”

Clara advances. Even in her flip-flops she’s about three inches taller than him. Up close her hair smells like baby powder. Kent fights the urge to sneeze.

“Show me,” she says. It does not sound like a question.

Kent takes her to the second floor. As loathe as he ever is to admit defeat, he has also begun to develop an ability to pick his battles. Sometimes. In certain circumstances.

“Look, I know it seems like a mess right now, but I’m just taking stuff out so I can see what I’ve got. Then I’m gonna donate it or something. Auction some shit off and give the money to Alex for his orphans.” Kent explains, when Clara has stopped in the hall to stare in what looks like blank horror at the piles he’s constructed from his discoveries.

“What’s in there?” Clara jerks a thumb at the closet door, idly nudging a pile of jerseys from his rookie year with her toes. “An actual skeleton?”

“You think you’re funny, but—”

“I’m hilarious,” Clara threatens.

“Fine.” Kent points at the vacuum. “Did you know that thing can suck up like, a whole spiderweb at once?”

Clara looks at him with her eyes narrowed, and Kent feels slightly as though he has been pinned inside a display case for strange insects. “You didn’t?”

Kent has a rapid flashback to testing the vacuum out on the outside of his thigh and winces. “No.”

“Don’t tell me you—”

“For the love of— no!” Kent wishes he didn’t have to say this. “I did not test it on my dick.”

Clara stands with her hands on her wide hips in the demilitarised zone in front of the closet door, facing him down. “So what’s in the closet?”

Kent can’t resist. “Me.”

Clara grimaces. “Are you?”

Kent has to think about it for a second. “I guess. Technically. Claude might disagree.”

“Where is Claude these days?”

“Probably making out with Simmer on some bike trail somewhere. Or at a wedding, he’s always at somebody’s wedding. Free booze.”

“You are sincerely the most stunted person I know.” Clara turns her back on him and without so much as a by your leave she yanks the door open.

Kent is half expecting a stack of old papers to come crashing down on them both, like in a PSA about hoarding and how it’s a symptom of repressed trauma, but instead he’s just treated to a puff of desultory dust motes rising into the air and the thing he knew would be in there. It’s just his old trunk from Quebec, _Parson_ stencilled on the side slightly lopsided from where he spray-painted it. It’s all beaten up from being shuttled all over Canada, and Kent has a few fond memories of sitting on it in his billet mom’s basement with Jack in his lap, playing with his hair.

There’s also a few random boxes in there alongside it, the contents of which are a mystery to Kent, who has been telling Zenaida to just put stuff in the hall closet whenever she asks where he wants something specific to go.

There’s a Crosby jersey laying dramatically over one stack of shoeboxes like a swooning maiden, and for some reason that’s what makes Kent laugh the most, imagining Sidney in it in exactly the same position.

“What the fuck?” Clara asks. “Is this your closet full of sad breakup relics?”

“I’m kind of offended you think I would _ever_ date Sid.” Sid loves three things, and those things are: winning, hockey, and winning at hockey. Probably also Nova Scotia, but that’s more Stockholm Syndrome than anything else, in Kent’s opinion.

Clara opens a box at random, waving away the dust. It’s full of photos of Kent in Juniors, back when people still printed photos. He thinks maybe his dad sent them over and he never really bothered going through them. “You should frame these,” Clara says, paging through them.

“Open another one,” Kent tells her, sitting down on the floor. “Let’s see how many we can get through before we find one of me naked.”

Clara is way ahead of him, already rummaging through one she snatches at random from halfway down a stack, causing the rest to wobble alarmingly as they resettle. Kent leans back and takes a picture. He tags it ‘reinforcements’ and it has a hundred likes in under a minute, because Clara looks like a beautiful demon eagerly clawing the lid off a tiny coffin.

Clara drops the box. It lands with a leaden thump, the lid still clutched in her hands. She stares at him, frozen in the light from the little circular window high in the wall that Kent has always thought made the space a little bit ominous. What kind of closet really needs a window? Kent fixates on the light for a second and considers getting another drink.

“Hey, what were you doing, um, three years ago around…now?”

Kent makes a sincere effort to remember. It would have been after playoffs, so he might have been having his Cup day, but he’s historically had it for his birthday, so probably not that. Claude would likely have stopped being too bitter about getting knocked out so close to the final, maybe. “I don’t know. Should I guess?” Kent doesn’t actually want to say he was getting a drunk blowjob in a VIP section bathroom but it was probably something similar.

Clara pushes the box at him.

In it, right there in front of his eyes, is a desiccated ring-pop that has clearly been licked, a plastic tiara, and something that looks an awful lot like—

Like—

“You missed your anniversary,” Clara says, starting to laugh horribly, wheezing cackle turning into all-out hysterics the longer Kent is speechless. “Mazel tov! I didn’t even have to get you a wedding present!”

There is a picture of Kent with one eye closed, leaning into the side of Claude’s neck. Claude is wearing the tiara, and his mouth is open like he’s not sure what to do with his lips. His missing tooth is very obvious, as is the marriage licence displayed happily by the impressive Britney lookalike drag queen standing next to them. Peeking out from under the pile is the edge of a piece of parchment-print paper that Kent pulls out with numb fingers.

There’s a ring-pop stain on it like a royal seal.

“Oh shit,” Kent manages. “I’ve been fucking up my taxes.”

-

Ottawa

-

Claude is pretty used to getting random communiqués from Kent during the off season now. Usually it brightens his week, because Kent is the kind of person who takes shirtless selfies with his cat taking up most of the frame. A few years ago contact without the incentive of imminent sex would have seemed odd, but people have been dropping off lately, getting into their late twenties and getting injured, getting married, moving on. Claude thinks about it occasionally, the After Hockey part of his life, but usually he solves that problem with a beer and a couple hours at the gym.

It’s slightly more unusual for Kent to call him outright without working his way up to it first with a few texts or a picture, so when Kent calls him for the second time in two days Claude should be concerned. He isn’t, particularly, but he should be.

“Kipper.” Across the yard, Simmer rolls his eyes. He’s grilling, and Claude is enjoying the view and the imminent arrival of burgers, which is the making of a very enjoyable evening. Claude makes a face back at him. Wayne should know by now that Kent is a force of nature when he wants to be and resistance is futile.

Besides, if Wayne is going to invite himself over after his appointments at the Children’s Hospital then Claude isn’t going to spare him his personal life.

“Can you talk?” Kent asks, sounding a little bit more strangled that usual.

“No, I’m busy.” He and Wayne have plans, and those plans involve burgers and condoms. Not together, but not that far apart. “I’ll ask Wayne if you can watch if you want.” Across the yard, Wayne glares at him. “He says no, sorry.”

Kent makes a noise deep in the back of his throat that reminds Claude of his monstrous, spoiled cat. “It’s… important.”

Claude’s entire body tenses up. His afternoon buzz fades into background noise, and Wayne seems to pick up on it right away, taking the burgers off the grill and making his way over to the sun lounger next to Claude’s to listen in. Claude could take this inside, but Simmer might have to cover for Claude if Claude has to testify in court or something, so it doesn’t seem prudent to tell him to butt out.

“So,” Kent says, drawing it out. “Uh, would you say that sleeping with someone you didn’t know you were married to counts as cheating?”

“What the fuck is he talking about?” Wayne asks, neatly voicing Claude’s thoughts.

“How well do you remember, uh, three years ago?”

“Knocked us out of the playoffs,” Claude rattles off immediately. “Then you invited me up to Vegas as soon as the Cup was gone, because you’re an asshole.” Wayne is leaning right in to hear and he smells great, which is very distracting. “Have you been sleeping with someone married?”

Kent cackles horribly. “In a manner of speaking.”

Something vestigial in the very back of Claude’s mind surfaces. It smells like jello shots. “ _No._ ”

“I think this makes our pets step-siblings,” Kent says. “Like the Brady Bunch.”

“What the hell is the Brady Bunch?”

“You don’t know what the Brady Bunch is?” Wayne asks, clearly incredulous. “How?”

Claude feels everyone may be missing the point. “Kent!”

“Our anniversary was last week,” Kent says. “I think our marriage is on the rocks. The romance is gone. There’s no spark left. You won’t even let me watch you and Simmer—”

Wayne roars with laughter, doubled over at the waist.

Claude has a vague memory of a drag bar and a hangover that came to full force like a solar eclipse a whole day after they ended up back at Kent’s tacky mansion. Claude thinks he remembers Kent being unusually jubilant, even for Kent after a Stanley Cup, and Claude thinks he somehow found it under the bitterness of losing yet again to be happy for him. Probably.

“I’m gonna call you back,” Claude forces out, before he hangs up, puts his phone down on the lounger and walks fully clothed into the pool.

Wayne is looking down at him when he comes up for air. “Bro, does this mean I owe you a wedding present?”

Claude takes a deep breath and goes back under. Wayne is just a dark brown outline on the surface but even through the water Claude can tell that he’s still laughing. Frankly, Claude would be offended, if it didn’t make the weirdest kind of sense.

-

Las Vegas

-

Claude arrives at Kent’s house way too early in the morning to reasonably expect him to be awake, but for someone who is nominally a celebrity, Kent has abysmal home security. His gate is perpetually open even though he lives in a recognisable subdivision in the Lakes, and he even keeps a spare key under a giant flowerpot with a cactus in it beside his back door.

If Claude was his insurance underwriter he’d be weeping, but Claude isn’t. He is, apparently, his husband, so he just lets himself in and sets off the coffee-pot. It’s the kind that just drips coffee through a filter, and somehow that fact has always been weirdly charming. He’s sure Kent has had the same one since he was a teenager, and no amount of enjoyment derived from the vanilla frappuccinos that surface on his Instagram appears to have convinced him to upgrade to espresso.

This is all much easier to think about than anything more practical when it’s early in the morning and already so hot outside that Claude thinks he’s sweating through his underwear.

He watches the coffee drip, checks his messages — three from Wayne, including one that says “send me your list!” with an emoji that looks like a bouquet and then the obligatory eggplant — and looks around Kent’s huge, sunlit kitchen.

There are old plates in the sink and the fridge is covered in post-its that mostly seem to be self-reminders to do basic tasks like “order milk” and “cat food!!!!!” underlined several times. Kent has always been kind of a fly-by-night loner in some intangible way, and so many little things about him indicate a deep abhorrence of change. He’s employed the same cleaning lady for almost a decade, and Claude has never known him to commit to anything besides a good time and beautiful hockey.

As long as Claude has known him, which is rather a long time by now, Kent has marched exactly at his own pace wherever he’s going, and he doesn’t think anyone trying to keep him to time would have succeeded, no matter how much effort they put into it. Claude has certainly never tried, and Kent’s sideways entry into his life has never, as a consequence, made a reversal.

Since the first time they hooked up at the Olympics (with Sid’s memorable assist) Claude has dated two girls and a guy, and been pretty sad for all of those breakups. Not devastated, exactly, but reasonably affected. He’s just started to think that ‘reasonably affected’ is sort of a lame way to feel when someone you’re dating dumps you because you’re constantly distracted and also not willing to go all-in on monogamy.

He and Kent have never had a conversation about it, because Claude’s romantic life doesn’t interest Kent, and Kent doesn’t date. If Claude were a psychoanalyst… well, he’d probably have been stripped of whatever licensing those people have, but if he were —somehow— not a hockey player, maybe Kent’s determined refusal to do anything that might remotely resemble a relationship would have red flags all over it, as well as a few obvious points of origin.

Thankfully for all concerned, Claude is not. That still goes nowhere when it comes to trying to figure out why his first response to learning he’s been married for three years isn’t horror, as such.

For one thing, Kent seems to think it’s hilarious. That helps.

It doesn’t really do much to calm the part of Claude that is furious at himself for getting swept up in another one of Kent’s black holes of charisma, the kind of cosmic event that manifests itself as a bender, because Kent’s joy is as infectious as the fucking mumps and Claude has always been susceptible. He’s been downright easy for it, historically.

It hasn’t always been a bacchanal, though, and part of Claude is furious they did this to each other with the kind of abandon they’re a little too old for, because he’d have liked to actually remember it it.

He’s not sure how to bring it up in a way that doesn’t sound angry, because that’s not how he feels. Mostly, he’s retroactively sad that their drunken selves felt like it was a great idea but never informed their rational counterparts, because of all the people in the world Claude can think of to be accidentally married to, Kent is the least likely but the most welcome.

Claude is still staring at the coffee machine when Kent stumbles down the stairs with his cat under one arm like an oversized chinchilla and drops her in front of her food bowl as he makes a beeline for the mugs. “You walk like an elephant,” he says by way of greeting. “Would it have killed you to take off your shoes?”

“Some of us don’t sleep until noon, jackass,” Claude says, defensively. “I could have murdered you, by the way. Your house is like whatever the opposite of Fort Knox is.”

“The Grand Canyon,” Kent mutters distractedly.

Claude pours him some coffee, then some for himself. Kent looks in the fridge, moans, and sits back down at the counter to drink it black. Claude assumes this means there’s no milk, and resigns himself to doing the same. He takes a sip, decides it’s not the worst thing that’s ever happened, and feels slightly more awake in the face of Kent’s bleary half-moon eyes. He has, however, no explanation for what he says next. “We can’t annul,” he blurts. “We’ve consummated.”

Kent spits coffee all over himself.

-

There’s a diner on Rainbow that serves challah french toast, which Claude discovers after Kent throws the keys to his stupid tiny car at Claude’s head and then falls asleep in the passenger seat after putting it in the GPS.

Claude lets Kent order for him, so he ends up with a plate of food that could feed three people comfortably, brightly coloured and drenched in something that claims to be syrup but very much isn’t.

Kent’s challah thing looks decidedly more appealing, so Claude splits both in half and redistributes them.

“Seizing the means of production?” Kent asks, spearing a blueberry with his fork with his usual accuracy.

“What?”

“Never mind.” Kent manages to smile at him, an indication that he’s ready to be awake. “Is this when you yell at me and tell me you’ll see me in court?”

“Who’ll get custody of the kids?” Claude asks. “We’ll have to think about schools. Are there hidden assets in your name?”

“We really will have to talk to the IRS,” Kent drawls, sprawling back in his side of the booth, mottled floral t-shirt and aggressive bedhead making him look like someone’s pastel-coloured idea of a college student. “Who’ll inherit our fortune?”

He smirks, and Claude feels terrible for thinking it, but he wishes it wasn’t quite so easy to joke about it. Kent just makes it happen, always offering an avenue for seriousness to slide away, leaving himself in the line of fire like he’s happy to let himself be most of the joke.

Claude has thought about it, sometimes, how he can seem so casual while still being somehow impenetrable. Claude wonders how many people Kent has ever gone to in vulnerable moments, and doesn’t like to think it’s probably not that many.

The worst part is, Claude can see why at some apex of drunkenness he’d have thought it was the best idea in the world to marry him. He wouldn’t even have had to be as wrecked as he obviously was.

It’s not like Kent is bad to look at, for one thing, even if he does wear jorts more often than anyone really should and has an unfortunate passion for terrible hats. Claude, once a person who bleached his very red hair blonde and deeply ambivalent about how many teeth he has at any given time, has no leg to stand on with any comparisons there.

None of that is really important though; it doesn’t matter at all what Kent looks like, at this point.

Sure, at the beginning Claude was always happy to get a courtside view of Kent’s mass of coarse blonde hair in his fist and to reap the benefits of Kent’s complete lack of inhibition when it came to inviting himself over. Claude’s as human as they come, and Kent has been welcome in his bed even when he was being an asshole. It’s just that somewhere along the way, it grew, and now they’re fucking married. It happened years ago and neither of them thought it was important enough to remember it.

Fuck, Claude doesn’t even know how Kent found out. He hasn’t asked for proof. It’s enough to take Kent at his word.

Claude’s own most awful revelation on a Wednesday morning in August somewhere in the suburban hell of greater Las Vegas is that he doesn’t want to lose this. He doesn’t want to lose Kent’s illogical, easy presence in his life. He doesn’t want to be Kent’s ex-anything, even if it doesn’t really mean anything but that they got drunk one summer and decided to do the thing Las Vegas makes easier than anywhere else.

“Don’t divorce me,” Claude says. Kent appears to have nothing to say to that, because he shoves a huge forkful of challah into his mouth and leaves the tines between his teeth, not even chewing. It’s like he’s gagged himself with breakfast food, so Claude is forced to fill the silence. “I mean, we’ve been okay for three years. What if you didn’t?”

Kent swallows. Claude’s not sure he chewed his mouthful, and experiences a moment of mortal terror that he might have killed him with shock.

Kent looks down at the table, fork now stabbed into the side of his plate occupied by Claude’s partitioned pancakes. He doesn’t look up. “You-- you’re not mad?”

“Husband sounds better than ex-husband,” Claude says, fighting not to be overwhelmed by relief and something else, the thing he’s never really had to deal with head-on before, which always seems to surface when Kent suddenly seems to take up less space in a room. “I’m always the ex, it gets old.”

“What if someone finds out?”

“So what?” The thought has obviously crossed his mind, but Claude thinks maybe it doesn’t matter that fucking much, in the long run. If Kent wants to make any excuses, they can always claim it’s been an inside joke for years, and it wouldn’t even be a lie. They’ve been married, legally, for longer than Claude was with his last girlfriend. Fuck, he’s been abstractly considering the possibility of bigamy without even knowing it. Suddenly, the whole thing seems hilarious. “We don’t have to tell anyone. Unless you want to be Canadian for after you retire, I guess. I think you could swing it, but Twitter might kill you.”

“Why aren’t you mad?” Kent sort of gestures at him, unfolding his shoulders just enough that Claude suddenly realizes he’s been hunching into himself.

“Do you want me to be?” Claude asks, perplexed. “Did you hold me at gunpoint?”

“No! I don’t even have a-- I don’t think so, anyway.” Kent has to pause to think about it, which was not what Claude meant to imply at all. “I-- what if you wanted to settle down or some shit? You and that girl were pretty serious for a while, right?”

They hadn’t been, but maybe by Kent’s standards they were. Claude thinks about it for a second, just to make sure it’s what he really wants to say before he says it. “I don’t think so,” he admits. “She dumped me, so I guess it wasn’t.”

“What if I want a divorce?” Kent asks, tensing up as their server comes by to check on them for coffee refills. She moves on, and Kent doesn’t unclench. “I’m not going to stop fucking other people. I don’t even-- how would that even work?”

Claude hadn’t even considered that as an option. “Was that on the table?”

There is a moment of terrible silence during which Kent looks at him like he’s never seen him before, and Claude wonders if this is what will make them strangers again, this stupid piece of paper they apparently have their names on. Claude is about to say something, just to break the stalemate, when Kent abruptly gets up, leaves a wad of cash without even counting it, and grabs Claude by the collar, apparently intent on towing him out the door if he doesn’t get his feet under him fast.

Claude scrambles to catch up, halfway to turned on almost by default, but he manages to get a breath out as they burst through the swinging diner doors and puts a little distance between them.

Kent has his lip between his teeth, always a sure sign that Claude is about to get lucky, but that feels-- it feels torn somehow, jagged like there’s a raw edge. “Listen, I’m not saying _no_ \--”

“Drive me home, I’m too hungover,” Kent orders, and Claude must be some kind of idiot because every protest flies right out the window, along with reason and rationality, and one of the paper napkins wedged in Kent’s garbage-filled cupholders.

-

It’s not the best sex they’ve ever had, all told. For one thing, Claude is still kind of confused about the whole thing, including his own feelings on the matter, lodged off-centre in his chest and poking him whenever he moves wrong.

Kent is as bossy as he usually is though, which is still like being hotwired; Kent just has to look at him and say “bite me like you fucking mean it,” over his shoulder as he drags him into his bedroom and Claude is revved up and ready to go.

Claude doesn’t enjoy hurting people, but Kent isn’t really asking for that. Claude figured out a while ago that Kent likes to have reminders more than anything else, which is something Claude can get behind. As soon as he realised that was what Kent was after, the idea of an imprint Claude has left on him somewhere sticking around after Claude himself has disappeared from whatever room or hotel or-- or hell, the alleyway by that abysmal IHOP in Philly Kent loves so much for some reason-- whatever place they’ve been occupying together. That lingering shadow? Yeah, Claude is into that.

Claude bites him like he means it. Kent curses and reaches backwards, digging his blunt little nails into whatever part of Claude’s thigh he can reach.

After, when Claude has tossed the condom and gone to get a towel, Kent falls asleep, mouth open on his pillow and an angry, red mark on his shoulder Claude put there. Claude cleans it as well as he can without waking him, and wonders if maybe they should have noticed a lot earlier how easy this is. It never seemed like something worth questioning, really. It just kind of happened.

-

By mid-afternoon it’s almost 44 degrees out beyond the borders of Kent’s central air system.

By early evening Claude debates trying to grill for dinner, opens the back door, and decides upon being blasted in the face by desert air that perhaps he should see if there’s anything cold in the fridge instead.

It contains a whole shelf of pink protein shakes, one apple, and three takeout boxes with post-its on them. One of them says “thrs.” It is now Wednesday. Claude lifts the lid and discovers half-eaten dynamite shrimp.

“Jesus,” Claude mutters to himself, backing away.

There’s a takeout menu clipped to the front under some of the little reminders that has a few items circled, so Claude figures it’s a safe bet and orders delivery.

Claude is playing candy crush and trying not to think about anything when Kent comes into the living room with a box under each arm. He dumps them both on the coffee table where Claude’s feet are currently residing. He’s also wet from the shower which does absolutely nothing to dispel Claude’s absent arousal. Kent looks at him like he knows exactly what Claude is trying not to think, and yanks the lid off the smaller one with a flourish. “No take-backs, huh?”

“Are you twelve?”

“Spiritually,” Kent answers, shoving Claude over and crowding in next to him. “Go on, feast your eyes.”

Weirdly, it’s not the certificate that gets Claude all hung up. It’s the stupid picture, the way they’re leaning into each other, the way he looks like the worst and best version of himself all at once. He might never have really believed that wine brings truth, but it definitely skins off self-delusion sometimes, and what he’s looking at is a memory he doesn’t have of being this happy about something.

“We look good, right?” Kent says, elbowing him. “Love the tiara.”

“Who even took this?”

“Good question,” Kent admits. “Want to Hangover it and try to find out?”

It all seems like too much effort, honestly. “You could put it on Twitter and see if whoever’s guilty comes forward.”

Kent laughs with his head thrown back, spread over the couch with his thigh taking up space right next to Claude’s.

It seems like a great idea to slowly push him over and get on top, and Kent seems fine with it, so of course Claude is halfway to hard when the food arrives. Kent chuckles mercilessly as Claude curses and rolls off the couch. “Sure you don't want a divorce?”

“Fuck you,” Claude mutters, trying to find an angle that leaves his boner to the imagination. “You're stuck with me, better or worse.”

-

It only occurs to Claude when Kent has his bare feet shoved under his thigh and is scrolling his Netflix queue without stopping on anything that the house is kind of a disaster.

There are jerseys thrown over the chairs in the dining area and piles of shoes in the entrance and upstairs the hall was a wasteland of junk piles. “Are you moving?” Claude asks, spotting a sweater he’s 90% sure Kent has never worn over the back of a couch.

“What? No.” Kent glances at him, something a little shifty about the set of his mouth. “Zenaida quit. Retired.”

Claude has met Zenaida. He doesn’t think anything short of a dead body would alarm her, which is good because he's heard in Kent’s younger days it wouldn’t have been wildly outside the realm of possibility for one of his teammates to be unable to pace him and wind up outclassed and passed out on the floor. Claude wasn’t around then, but he still can’t imagine what would have driven her to leave Kent’s employ. The first time they met, Claude was naked in the pool and Zenaida just yelled at him to bring his glass inside when he was done with it. “Are you-- Did something happen?”

“Why does everyone keep asking me that? I told you man, she retired.”

Kent sounds totally normal. Claude has no idea why he’s worried. “After how many years?”

“Ten.” Kent settles on Real Housewives of Atlanta. “Stop wriggling.”

Claude waits all the way through the title credits before he asks again. “You okay?”

Kent shoves his foot all the way under Claude’s thigh until his toes are nudging his balls, grinning like he knows exactly what he’s doing when Claude jumps. “Well, if she hadn’t we’d never have known we weren't living in sin. Or that we were adultering each other. You know, gentile crap. We should get her something.”

Claude lets it go, well aware that pushing will result in nothing but an avoidance blowjob, which is fine in general but it would feel weird, knowing he’d done it on purpose. “Are you gonna hire someone else?”

Kent turns the volume up. Claude moves so Kent’s toes aren't right under him, absurdly distracted by the contact.

-

Kent doesn’t make a habit of smoking up, but he does have a stash. It’s part of being a good host, and not all his friends are hockey players. Besides, once or twice a summer when he really can’t sleep seems like a pretty benign drug habit, if he’s being honest with himself.

He leaves Claude sprawled in the wet spot at about three in the morning, ignoring his grumble of displeasure, and goes downstairs to the study where his box is.

He’s just licking the paper closed out on the porch when Claude stumbles downstairs and finds him. He’s completely naked, but so is Kent, so it doesn’t seem like it’s worth mentioning. Kent sticks his tongue out at him and lights up, taking the smoke as far down as it’ll go. Kent’s got deep lungs. It goes pretty far.

Claude drops down next to him and holds out two fingers for the joint.

One of the things Kent likes most about him is how hard it is to disrupt him, off the ice. On the ice he’s as redheaded as they come, but as long as Kent has known him the trouble he gets into has always seemed to be the fun kind. Kent would have thought twice about bailing him out of jail that time if he’d done something violent, maybe, but hey, maybe not. There’s no real way to tell, but fuck, he married him, his subconscious must like him enough for that. Kent takes a second drag and passes it over.

“Bogart,” Claude says, smirking at him.

The crickets are loud tonight, and the lights from the subdivision’s street lamps blot out the stars. The heat presses in from all sides even with the sun down, but Kent has always liked it. As the smoke starts working its way through him in a wet curl he feels okay about it. Less like he’s on some kind of shitty tightrope. Kent exhales. “You sure you don’t want a divorce? Last chance.”

“Do you wanna meet my mom?” Claude asks, smoke rolling out of his nostrils.

Kent scares a lizard back under a rock when he barks out a laugh that takes even him by surprise.

-

Somewhere In Canada

-

They fly to Ottawa to pick up Claude’s miniature dogs from Wayne, who claps Kent mightily on the shoulder and offers polite Canadian threats, and then they have to drive.

“Are you literally from the woods?” Kent gripes, halfway up to Timmins. “This is some Deliverance shit, what the _hell_?”

“Do you even know where Hearst is?” Claude asks, hooking his elbow out the window.

“No,” Kent admits. “I thought it was in Quebec.” Claude looks at him for so long Kent almost tells him to look at the road lest they crash into a tree and end this whole thing like a mercy killing. “Are we there yet?”

“If I killed you nobody would blame me,” Claude mutters, but he’s smiling a little, leaned as far back as he can go and still reach the wheel. He’s only two inches taller than Kent, so it’s not all that far, but he’s longer in the limbs, built with good proportions. Over the years he’s made some terrible grooming choices, but right now he looks pretty good, even if he does drive in flip-flops. Kent will never admit it but getting out of Las Vegas feels a little like an adventure, and Kent can cope with a road trip if there’s enough forward motion. Clara might have laughed at him for a solid minute when he asked her to catsit, but he doesn’t have to keep looking at all his stuff so Kent is very willing to take the route of avoidance, even it’s shaping up to take most of the day.

“I’m not giving you road head,” Kent stipulates.

“Okay,” Claude says, unmoved, “it’s not the way I’d want to go, anyway.”

Kent kicks his feet up on the dash, feeling his hips crack. “How would you want to? Go, I mean.”

“Quick, if I had a choice,” Claude says, after a while. “Not sure I’d like to linger.”

“I want to make the news,” Kent admits.

“‘S why I married you,” Claude tells him, leaning on the gas as the highway opens up. “Your caution.” It takes another few miles of road before Claude sets the cruise control and starts fiddling with the radio. “Why?”

Kent isn’t ready to answer that honestly, so it’s a total mystery why he does. “So word would get around fast, I guess. Nobody’d have to tell anyone.”

Claude settles on a station that’s telling them the weather report for Englehart before he rests a hand briefly on Kent’s knee. The contact is warm, his palm dry and rough and for a second so familiar Kent thinks about rolling out of the car window before Claude lets go. “That’s kind of sad, Kipper.”

“Or is it awesome?” Kent counters, something a little thick in his throat. “Two birds, one stone.”

“Dead birds always seemed kind of sad to me, anyway.”

“It’s just an expression. You haven’t learned it by now?” Kent jabs, falling back into the old joke.

“It’s okay, you know. Everyone knows Americans are linguistically impaired. We forgive you.”

Kent punches him in the shoulder, which Claude pretends not to notice. One of the dogs starts barking for no reason, which sets the other one off. One of these days Kent is going to have to learn their names. Claude rolls his eyes, yells something affectionate-sounding in French and pulls over to let them out.

Kent takes the opportunity to pull his hat over his eyes and go to sleep.

-

Nine hours in they stop in Matheson, which Kent is given to understand isn't strictly necessary, but frankly the idea of listening to Claude sing along to one more Celine Dion song might actually be considered motive for justifiable homicide.

“How do you know all the words?”

“How do you know all the words to every song Britney Spears ever sang?”

“That’s different,” Kent says, affronted. “She lives in Las Vegas. We’re friends.”

“Celine Dion is a national treasure,” Claude says, matter-of-factly. “Have some respect.”

“Have you met me?” Kent is kind of annoyed, but as always it seems to be fading. He's mostly hanging onto it for the sake of argument.

It’s starting to edge towards mid-afternoon. They set off at six after staying the night in Ottawa to pack the car, and Kent had honestly thought about bailing right then, but then he’d thought about going back to his empty fucking house and figured what the hell, he was due for an ill-advised road trip to the middle of nowhere with his husband of three years.

Matheson looks like it’s been transplanted into the woods by aliens trying to recreate nineteen-sixty-five. “Are we going back in time?”

“This is where Bob McCord was from,” Claude points out, which is not strictly an answer, but he’s already heading towards the treeline behind the gas station with both dogs bouncing along like they’re still excited even though the allure of the road has somewhat worn off for Kent.

Kent leaves them to it and goes to see what kind of jerky the store has. Halfway there he regrets not bringing a sweater, but hell if he’s going to let on that 22 degrees feels like fucking winter. “Hey, have you guys got jerky?”

The guy behind the counter doesn’t look up from the fishing rod he’s cleaning. “Third shelf by the tackle.”

Kent tries not to make it obvious he’s laughing when he finds not only regular jerky but moose jerky, caribou jerky and salmon jerky. He collects every single pack and drops them on the counter. “I’m gonna need a bag.”

“Holy shit,” the guy stares at him like Kent is the face of the sun. “Are you--”

“Are you buying all that?” Claude picks up a pack of the salmon kind and rips it open with his teeth. He spits the foil corner out without looking where it lands. “We need, uh-- thirty-five litres? Unleaded.”

“What--”

“Do you take credit?” Kent asks, fishing his wallet out of the corner of his pocket. “I don’t have any cash.”

“Stanley cup…” the guy manages, hands limp on his rod like he’s forgotten it’s there, though Kent very much has not.

“It weighs about twenty-five pounds,” Kent informs him. “It looks heavier than it actually is. Weird, right? It made my fruit loops taste like shoe polish though. Do not recommend.”

Claude clears his throat. “We’ve gotta be in Hearst by tonight.”

“Oh, right. Uh. That’ll be… a hundred and seventy five… dollars.”

Kent sticks his card in the reader with a big smile. “Have a nice day.”

“You’re an asshole,” Claude says, through a mouthful of fish. “He almost had a heart attack.”

“Does everybody up here have a hard rod?”

“Shut up. It’s your turn to pick the music.” Claude offers him a shard of salmon as they climb back into the car.

Kent hits shuffle on his phone and ends up with Jay-Z, but Claude just puts the car in drive and gets back on the highway.

-

Hearst

-

“Welcome to the moose capital of Canada,” Claude says, elbowing Kent awake in time for him to see a sign approaching that says “Hearst, 6,000.”

It looks a little desolate if Kent is being honest. The houses are prefab or weathered clapboard and the roads are cracked from the winters and seamed closed instead of resurfaced. It's very green though, a light fall of rain beading on the windscreen leaving it all a little blurred beyond the sweep of the windscreen wipers. “I don't see any moose.”

“Give it time.” Claude grins at him. He pulls left off the main road and then they're in an area of widely spaced houses, set back off the road. There's a heavy, wet smell in the air when Kent rolls down the window, and every so often he catches a glimpse of river through the trees.

The dogs start wiggling when they pull into the last driveway at the end of the road. The house it belongs to isn't grand but it's big, trimmed out in white over pale yellow. “She didn't want to paint it orange?”

“Then I'd get traded,” Claude says.

“Looks nice,” Kent admits, trying to figure out if he's nervous. “Should I be nervous?”

“Nah.” Claude grabs one of the dogs and lays him over his shoulders, much to the dog’s delight.

“Which one is that?”

“Charlie likes to be tall.”

“Too bad,” Kent says. “Did you tell her?”

Claude pauses in the act of getting out of the car, little dog face right next to his. It's absurd. Kent should be mocking him, probably, but actually it's just kind of great. He knew Claude was weird, but eleven hours in a car with him has done nothing but make Kent amazed anew that he's real. He curses people out on the road like he's talking about the weather. He's eaten seven packs of jerky and doesn't seem to have noticed. His t-shirt has a hole in it. It doesn’t appear to bother him.

“We don't have to tell her,” Claude offers.

“So we just came up here for the sake of it?”

“Some people do. I told her I was bringing you.”

“Does she speak English at least?”

“Nope.” Claude grins at him. “She might even be immune to your charms.”

“I'm sleeping in the car.”

“Come inside,” Claude says, “there's nowhere else to go, anyway.”

Kent can't argue with that logic. He's not sure he wants to.

-

“He's short,” his mother says, grabbing Claude's face in both hands. “He looks taller on TV. Does he speak French?”

Claude's not actually sure.

“No,” Kent supplies. “Hi.”

“He’s fluent in eavesdropping,” Claude offers.

“I can hear you,” Kent says, in English.

Claude's mother creases her very black eyebrows together, pursing her lips at him in a way he chooses to interpret as perplexed rather than angry. “This is the first one you introduce me to?”

“I'm the only one who put a ring on it,” Kent points out.

Claude figures one white lie is pretty much a drop in the bucket at this point. “He says he's happy to meet you.”

-

Claude takes Kent up to the bedroom he uses when he comes to stay. It’s not the room he grew up in, which is across town and much, much smaller than this, and hopefully now occupied by some other grumpy teenager desperate to get out of the north.

Kent peruses the books on the shelf, despite the fact they’re all in French, and seems to pick on at random. It’s a murder mystery. Claude has never read it. “How much French do you speak, anyway?” he asks, when Kent flops down bonelessly onto the bed, cracking open the first page.

“None,” Kent answers, nose buried in the paper.

“Liar.”

“Just because I don’t speak it doesn’t mean I don’t understand it,” Kent says, still not looking at him. “I didn’t spend three years in Quebec City for nothing, you know.”

Claude marvels that they didn’t overlap in Juniors sometimes, but then again, Kent would have been pretty wrapped up in Zimmermann back then. “Did you just answer questions in grunts?”

Kent moves the book away from his face enough that Claude can see one unimpressed greyish eye. “Dude, nobody was asking _me_ questions in the Q.”

Claude sits down on the edge of the mattress, shoving Kent over so he can fit next to him. “God you’ve got a huge ass. Move.” Kent grumbles, but he does, ending up with his head heavy on Claude’s shoulder, pressed into his side. Claude plays with his cowlick, reading over his shoulder for a little while. The book is awful. “Do you think this counts as our honeymoon?”

Kent laughs, dropping the book on his chest. “I fucking hope not. Your mom’s here.”

Claude pulls his hair. Kent makes a muffled sort of moaning sound, and Claude marvels yet again at how easy he is to touch. It’s not that Kent is prickly. Exactly the opposite. It’s just that Claude thought at the beginning that it would just be a hockey thing, that they’d be friends with benefits until one of them settled down, and maybe even then. It’s an understanding plenty of people have, and Kent’s not exactly shy about himself. It’s that most of the guys Claude knows have developed boundaries when it comes to the casual kind of touch Kent seems to love, and Kent never has. It makes it very easy to be in his space.

Claude has learned a few things about Kent over the years. It’s mostly stuff he drops without realising it, because getting Kent to talk about himself is a little bit like trying to shuck an oyster, in the sense of requiring a blunt knife and good wrist work. Kent is from Rochester, doesn’t like birds and will leave the house to get away from spiders. Kent might be Jewish, but has never said one way or another. Kent has the sweet tooth to end them all, and isn’t shy about it. He has lived in Las Vegas since he was eighteen years old, which seems like it should have been a red flag to the bull of his alcohol tolerance, but he seems to have survived with all his organs intact.

The stuff he doesn’t say is the important shit. Claude remembers his first season pretty well, because every time they came up on the Aces the Aces obliterated them, and for a nothing expansion team full of time-biding veterans, that was pretty unexpected.

Claude always thought he was hot, in an abstract way, but only realising Kent was a true, dyed-in-the-wool hedonist got them going on the road they’re still on. That and ping-pong, which Claude still laughs about sometimes.

“Should we tell her about the Olympics?” Claude asks him, pulling a little harder.

Kent closes his eyes. “Tell her it was my amazing slapshot. Or my poutine-eating prowess.”

“You lost.”

“It was a moral victory.” Kent jabs him in the ribs. “I don’t think she really wants to know you’re a switch, do you?”

Claude is forced to concede his point. “Get your game face on. Time to help with dinner.”

“Thank god I don’t have parents,” Kent mutters, letting Claude drag him up.

-

Dinner is fish, which Kent is starting to think might be a staple of the diet up here. Kent is thinking about this, because Claude and his mother have been having what sounds like an argument for about fifteen minutes and show no signs of stopping for breath.

She looks nothing like him, which is hilarious all on its own; she has dark hair and no freckles, even though their eyes are the same colour and she’s equally as pale. She has encouraged Kent to call her Marie-Therese, which Kent is absolutely not going to do, but he thinks he sees now where Claude gets his demeanour from, and it is very much an enjoyable surprise to see it duplicated.

“I don’t see why you didn’t just tell me,” Marie-Therese is saying for maybe the sixth time. “He’s fine to look at, you know, I don’t know why you were worried.”

“Maman, it’s not that, come on,” Claude protests. “I knew you’d do this. It’s not that I didn’t invite you, I didn’t even invite myself.”

“We forgot,” Kent says, butting in.

Claude stares at him.

“Go on, translate.” Kent spears a piece of salmon and eats it. It’s delicious. “Is this fresh out of the river?”

“It happened three years ago,” Claude says, watching Kent chew. “Kent found the pictures when he was spring cleaning.”

“Spring cleaning in August?” Marie-Therese says, derisively. “You’re made for each other.”

-

Kent is ejected from the kitchen while Claude and his mother use the clean-up as an excuse to yell at each other. It’s too fast and muffled for Kent to follow so he doesn’t bother, deciding this is the perfect opportunity to snoop around.

There are pictures of a very small, round Claude in various hockey jerseys proudly displayed all over the living room. Kent takes pictures of the best ones, which are, in order: Claude missing all his front teeth playing bantam, Claude as a teenager with his awful bleached hair, Claude coming home from winning gold at the Junior World Cup looking extremely hungover, baby fat still clinging around his face. Lastly, a bunch of kids in puffy neon snowsuits, a ginger mop identifying Claude in the crowd.

It’s kind of nice, seeing all this crap displayed. It doesn’t look like a shrine, which Kent has sometimes thought of picture galleries, because there are plenty of pictures of other people too: a huge guy with Claude’s aggressively ginger colouring that must be his dad, holding Claude in a headlock. A bunch of dogs Kent assumes to be dearly departed. Claude’s mom looking hot in the eighties with a huge mullet.

The dogs are scratching at the back door so Kent lets them in, accepting one of them on his lap as he sits down with his beer and his phone to check twitter.

The guy from the gas station put security footage of them online like a cryptid-sighting alien conspiracist, and Kent’s notifications are hundreds deep. Kent retweets the footage and adds a winky face. His publicist is going to murder him in cold blood.

_Say hi to Claude!_ says the first text he has from Andre, timestamped the middle of the night. He must be in Sweden. _Hey, if a guy takes you windsurfing does that mean he’s into you?_

_Everyone’s into you,_ Kent informs him. _Can’t you ask Backy these questions?_

Andre sends him a frowny face. _He just tells me to use water-based lube._

Claude comes through the kitchen door with a plate of cookies and a chagrined look, Marie-Therese close on his heels. Kent snaps a picture. He looks like he’s twelve again.

“You,” she says, pointing at Kent. “I have something for you.”

“Is she going to give me a piece of her mind?” Kent asks him.

“No, I got that,” Claude sighs. “She won’t tell me.”

Marie-Therese disappears upstairs. Kent makes room on the couch for Claude. Charlie immediately jumps ship for Claude’s thighs. Kent doesn’t blame him. Kent takes a cookie and eats it whole, mostly because Claude is looking at him and he wants to prove he can. It tastes okay with beer, surprisingly.

Claude laughs at him.

Marie-Therese comes back with a box. She hands it to Claude, then stands there, glaring pointedly at him. “Well?”

Claude opens it. “Oh, fuck no.”

Kent leans over to get a look. It’s a plain gold ring. It looks pretty big, and very old.

“My father lost three fingers at the sawmill so he couldn’t wear it anymore,” Marie-Therese informs them. “See which one of you it fits.”

“Are you giving me a cursed ring?” Kent whispers. “Is it haunted?”

Claude shrugs. “Maybe.”

Kent slips it onto his thumb. “Does this mean your family approves?”

“You’ll have to ask the ghost if he ever shows up,” Claude mutters, colouring a deep, brick red. “Are you actually going to wear it?”

Kent thinks about it. It’s pretty heavy. He’d have to put it on a chain for hockey. He spins it around his knuckle, closing his hand into a fist. “Was your grandfather a giant? What happened to you?”

Claude glances at his mother before he smirks at Kent, leaning in. “No take-backs in this economy,” he whispers. “Tell her you have a headache and we’ll go upstairs.”

“Thank you for dinner,” Kent manages, mouth going a little dry.

Marie-Therese looks far too satisfied with herself, but she just waves them off as Claude makes their excuses.

-

Kent watches Claude get undressed. He’s pretty much artless about it, like every other hockey player Kent has ever fucked. They all spend too much time naked around each other to be precious about it, but it’s still fun to watch him.

“You know we can still do this if we get divorced,” Kent points out.

Claude kicks his boxers away. “We can do it married, too.”

“What if you want like, kids or something?” Kent spins the ring around. He can already tell it might become a habit. It should feel too fast, but the hilarity still hasn’t worn off, and here he is in a double bed in fucking Hearst, Ontario. The moose capital of Canada. Probably about to get fingered, so it definitely could be worse.

Claude shrugs. “Why have kids when I’ve got dogs?”

“It’s that easy, huh?”

Claude looks at him. Kent should really be used to it by now, the knack he has of raising one eyebrow like he knows Kent is completely full of shit but doesn’t care. He’s always knelt for him with good grace, too, and Kent’s not bored of that, either. Claude goes for the top button of Kent’s jeans, his fingers warm where they brush under the waistband. “I could have kids with anyone,” he says, easing the zipper down.

Kent can’t help it. It’s the combination of a long day and Claude’s blithe assurance and easy hands, probably, but it just comes out of Kent’s mouth fully formed. “So you’re not leaving?”

Claude puts both hands on Kent’s still infuriatingly denim-covered thighs and leans right back on his heels. Kent isn’t anywhere close to frantic, but it feels kind of bad anyway, being this split open in front of him, which makes no sense, because Claude is the one who’s fucking naked. “How long have we been doing this?” Claude asks him, stroking the inside of his thighs with his thumbs.

“Six years,” Kent admits, after some internal calculations. “I think.”

“You got any grand plans I should know about?”

Kent puts his hands on top of Claude’s, because if he’s gonna say it he’s not gonna say it distracted by the slow rasp of contact against his inseam. “You don’t have to--”

“Neither do you,” Claude points out.

“What if--”

“You’re kind of an idiot sometimes, Kipper,” Claude interrupts.

He looks sort of unbearably fond, and Kent has a sudden flashback to waking up next to him in his stupid log cabin in the middle of nowhere having left all his clothes on his neighbour’s dock. Claude never even got around to asking him when he was planning on getting lost.

“Fuck,” Kent mutters, struck by the realisation that Claude is right. “Oh, fuck, Ovi was right. You _are_ my boyfriend.” Kent scrubs a hand over his face, aware that he’s beginning to laugh hysterically but unable to stop. He pokes himself in the corner of his eye with the ring and just laughs harder, staring at it. Claude pushes him over, unfolding himself and rearranging Kent. He gets in bed, hands all sure and warm, and Kent manages to catch his breath only to lose it again, warmth spreading from everywhere Claude is touching him. “It’s like divorce chicken and we both lost.”

“Actually, I think I won divorce chicken,” Claude says into the back of his neck. “Technically.”

“Someone’s gonna have to tell Sid.”

Claude huffs. “Not even Sid would suggest bigamy for a win.”

Kent disagrees, but fucked if he’s going to ruin the moment. That being said, he's sort of half mast and ready to commit to more, so he feels he can be forgiven for only waiting a minute before asking whether a handy is still on the table.

It is. Kent tries not to feel bad about defiling Claude's mom's sheets and mostly succeeds.

-

Somewhere in Sweden

-

Alex loves Twitter, he truly does.

Nicky is completely gone and his side of the bed is cold, which means he’s probably already outside doing whatever it is he does when Alex is asleep. Probably sitting completely still and glaring at the birds that eat his cherries.

That means Alex gets to surprise him with coffee and the gossip of the decade, two things Nicky is eternally sustained by.

When Alex finds him he is under a tree fully-clothed, which is a shame, because it ruins the fantasy Alex has of coming upon him naked in a bower like a grumpy nymph and tumbling him gently to the loamy forest floor, but Nicky holds out a hand for the coffee and smiles, which is almost as good.

“You look cheerful,” Nicky observes. “What happened?”

“I’m always cheerful.” Alex shoves him over, to Nicky’s grumbled displeasure. “Look.”

Nicky squints at the screen. “That just looks like Parson.”

“Parson and--”

“And Claude.” Nicky sips his coffee and manages to make even that sound extraordinarily unimpressed.

“Andre slide in my DMs,” Alex explains. “They at Claude’s mother’s house.”

Nicky takes the phone, considering it intently. “Do you think they’ve finally admitted it?”

“Not sure. Look, #parsespotting is trend.”

Nicky gives it back, drumming his fingers on his knee. “How much is the pot again?”

“Big,” Alex admits. “Too big, maybe.”

“Are the rules still that we have to wait for them to tell people?”

“One has to say boyfriend,” Alex recites.

“Who had this August?”

This is the best part. “Me.”

Nicky smirks at him. “You always did have great timing.”

-

Las Vegas

-

Clara has known Kent Parson a long time. When Kent arrived Jeff had been in Vegas for two years, and Clara was considering becoming his girlfriend mostly to shut him up about it. He was cute, and pretty good in bed, though she had to train him out of some bad habits like trying to dirty-talk her, which was just kind of embarrassing. He wasn’t shy about going down though, unlike _some_ people, and Clara had appreciated his terrible love for basketball shorts, because it indicated he was low-maintenance. He was also away for sixty percent of the season.

Then Kent moved in with him, and Jeff became marriage material overnight, because Clara has still to this day, two kids and a dog later, never seen anyone go into protective mode that fucking fast.

It didn’t help that Kent was a ludicrously weird dude, even at eighteen. There was no question he was going to stay in the majors, even right off the bat, but what he had an overabundance of in talent he absolutely lacked in anything approaching domestication.

Clara had been pretty happy to sit back and watch, honestly, not wanting to get in the middle of whatever was happening in Jeff’s little man heart that made it grow three sizes over a kid only two years younger than him. Kent had taught Jeff all kinds of crap, like how to do yoga and the best way to trick a magic eight ball, and in return Jeff had started actually putting food in his house and sticking to a routine that included more than playing, partying, sleeping, and inviting her over. They started having dinner together around Christmas that year when it emerged that Kent wasn’t going anywhere and seemed sort of heartbreakingly baffled at the idea that he was supposed to.

She’d known Jeff was a good dude, but they were all young. She’d have forgiven herself if she’d dumped him, but after that, she’s glad she didn’t.

If nothing else, the fact that he’s gone for most of the winter means she can take the summer off, so he’s with the kids and she’s at Starbucks with three friends when Kent calls her from Canada.

Clara has long since accepted that having him around means life is never boring, and Kent usually sticks around in Las Vegas even when there’s no hockey, barring the occasional last minute trip for a booty call. He’s a pretty great babysitter, so she figures it’s a fair trade to check in on his cat, even if he’s high-strung about it, and has been texting her repeatedly for pictures.

“I’ve gotta take this,” she tells them, excusing herself to go sit on the patio.

“Is being married hard?” Kent asks, without a hello.

“Jeff expects me to choose a school for the kids because he only has a GED, so yeah, I think so. How hard can it be to just google “schools that don’t suck?” I keep forgetting how useless he is sometimes unless he’s got a hockey stick. He’s good at being a dad though, and he’s pretty good in bed. Seven out of ten. Why?”

“We’re not-- I don’t think we’re getting divorced,” he says, sounding a little forced. “Me and Claude.”

Clara holds in the laugh, too surprised by how happy she is to hear that. He’s such an asshole, but he’s one of hers. “I guess you can’t annul because of all the fucking, huh?”

“That’s exactly what Claude said.”

“Just because he doesn’t want to doesn’t mean you can’t.” It’s so motherfucking hot out. Clara presses her iced latte to her throat, waiting for Kent to fire back with some completely idiotic protest, just because he feels he has to. He doesn’t. That’s new. “You okay?”

“Yeah, actually.” Kent sounds surprised. “I met his mom. He’s from the middle of fucking nowhere, I thought we were gonna be eaten by wolves or something.”

“So what’s the problem?” Clara doesn’t fully believe in tough love, but sometimes getting Kent to work his way around to the point takes a little nudging, like when he got plastered after their first Stanley Cup and told her the Zimmermann story, wetly and mostly into her chest.

“I don’t want our thing to change,” Kent says, voice just a little more hesitant than she’s prepared to deal with. “It was a good thing.”

“Not all change is bad,” Clara says, pitching for quiet, trying to ignore how badly she wants to see his face in favour of being a good friend. “Right?”

“I liked having a best friend,” Kent admits, a little shakily.

Clara kind of wants to take back all the times she teased him about that, but it’s too late now. “I’m not married to mine,” she tells him. “Sometimes you get so fucking lucky it drives me nuts. But you can still divorce him.”

Kent sighs. “Nah,” he says, slowly. “I’m gonna let it ride.”

“Attaboy,” Clara tells him, trying not to let on that she’s just fistpumped her latte all over her skirt. “Might as well take advantage of your legal right to drunken matrimony.”

“You’re a demon,” Kent informs her, matter-of-factly. “Thanks.”

He hangs up without saying goodbye.

_Your rookie’s all grown up,_ Clara sends to Jeff, once she’s gotten her smile back under control, dabbing at the coffee stain with her shirt, which is having no appreciable effect.

_DID HE SAY BOYFRIEND AND IF SO DO YOU HAVE EVIDENCE?_ Jeff demands.

_They’re married, idiot,_ Clara reminds him.

_This creates a rulebook situation,_ Jeff texts back. _We need a referee._

-

Hearst

-

“Hello. We owe you twenty-three thousand, six-hundred and eight dollars and nineteen cents,” says Henrik. “Henke and I agreed. You’re married now, so you cannot be boyfriends. You have outmanoeuvred us.”

“I’m sorry, but _what_ is going on?” Kent is fucking napping, or was until literally thirty seconds ago, when his phone started ringing. Phones are ungodly and should be banned, especially when they have interrupted a truly amazing sleep by buzzing aggressively against his thigh, which is wedged up behind Claude’s thigh, and thus has woken him up as well.

“Ah. I didn’t realise you were so behind. Please check your email.” Henrik does not hang up.

“I have to hang up on you to do that. How come you even have my number?”

“I can’t be made to testify against you in court, remember that,” Claude mumbles, shoving a pillow over the exposed side of his face. “Tell whoever it is to fuck off.”

“Hank says he owes me money.”

“Which Hank?”

Kent isn’t sure. “Which Hank are you?”

“Lundqvist. Everyone has your number,” Henrik says, benevolently. “For emergencies. We sent Claude the email too, as the sum must be divided equally among both parties.”

“Check your email,” Kent tells Claude, before he can ask more questions. “Who’s _we?_ ”

“About… sixteen people, total. In the interest of anonymity we did not itemise the list of bets.”

“Bets?”

Claude huffs, emerging from his pillow-cocoon as he fishes his phone off the nightstand. Kent can’t see his screen, but Claude abruptly stiffens, lets out a noise that might be a laugh, and rolls over, shoving Kent more towards the middle of the bed as he angles his screen so Kent can see it. Kent reads silently with his mouth wide open.

“You fuckers,” Kent hisses. “How long has this been running?”

“We cannot disclose--”

“I only see you like twice a year how come this is even--”

“Ah,” Henrik says, clicking his tongue the same way Backy does. Kent assumes it's a Swedish thing. “Henke and I were the referees in the event of unforeseen circumstances. Congratulations, by the way. We're very happy for you. Retroactively.”

“Why were you--”

“To be decided by parties unexposed to physical congress with either of the two individuals in question,” Claude reads, sounding somewhat strangled under his sleepy rasp.

“Really?” Kent asks. “Really?!”

“Bias would be implied. Would you prefer a direct transfer or a cheque?”

No way is Kent paying tax on this. “Direct transfer.”

“So technically we won the bet?” Claude asks, starting to smile, scrolling back through the text.

“Technically nobody won,” Henrik says to Kent. “If we are being pedantic. We could have annulled all wagers, but you've been entertaining us for many years. Henke and I decided it was fair.”

“That's very Scandinavian of you,” Kent mutters.

“Don't let Backy hear you say that,” Henrik admonishes. “Congratulations again. Goodbye!”

Kent is left holding his phone against his ear like an idiot, too stunned to move.

“We should throw a party,” Claude says, showing Kent his phone. “In honour of us “evading the parameters of the wager as stated at the time of bets placed.” Sounds like we won, to me.”

“Do you think Sid bet on us?” Kent asks, looking at the total amount in disbelief.

“Dunno.” Claude grins and turns the camera on, taking a quick selfie of them. Kent looks extremely rumpled. Claude looks like he always does; down one tooth and slightly too odd to be handsome, but he sends it as a reply to the cc’d parties with “this means we won” above the “Envoyé de mon iPhone” his emails always end with, and Kent finds himself pleased that he won't have to ask for a copy.

“We should have it in Vegas,” Kent says, before he can change his mind. “Everyone loves Vegas.”

“It's the devil’s asshole,” Claude says. “I'm in.”

-

Las Vegas

-

The house is still a disaster zone when they get back three days later. Claude suspects it will remain that way indefinitely, and resolves to ask Kent about it after he’s over his party frenzy.

Speaking of which: Kent loves parties.

Claude knew this, of course. He can’t have spent the better part of the last few years with Kent in his life without seeing the quickly-deleted wasted selfies of him or the snapchat videos of him singing drunkenly to his cat and not realise (and lovingly accept) that for the amount of shit Kent still gives him over the Cop Incident he loves to get wrecked in good company himself.

He’s maybe a little too old for it, but Claude just has to sit back and watch as Kent, newly the recipient of their joint windfall, exerts the gravitational pull of his charisma on all their friends.

“Yeah, my place,” Kent says in a voice note to their brand new fireworks-and-eggplant-emoji group chat. “Don’t bring anything.” It’s like he has somehow bent the laws of physics to ensure that his house is in everyone’s neighbourhood and he fully expects them all to just show up. “ _Of course_ Las Vegas has a helipad, come on.”

Claude laughs at him and goes to walk the dogs. They have scared Kent’s cat back to the third floor where he’s built her some kind of cat paradise fortress of old boxes and catnip sachets, but Claude thinks they might have reached a truce through the creation of a demilitarised border.

It’s just about cool enough at night to walk around the block without expiring of heatstroke. It’s not particularly picturesque by his standards; his tastes run to green and water, but it’s got a weird kind of charm to it. All the spiky cactus shapes give the houses weird silhouettes around their garish gables and acid-green irrigated lawns. The sidewalk is still giving off warmth, asphalt running a playback of the heat of the sun. Claude can’t imagine what he’d have done if this had been his first landing after the draft, but he can kind of see why Kent likes it so much. It’s everything Quebec isn’t, sometimes to its detriment, but Kent has always seemed at ease in the desert. Claude should ask him what Rochester is like, probably, but he doesn’t think Kent’s been back in recent memory, which might be all he needs to know.

When Claude gets back Kent has put on a party mix from the built-in speakers and is dancing to Katy Perry, because that’s the kind of person he is, and has been totally at ease with it the whole time Claude has known him. In hindsight, maybe that fact alone would have alerted Claude one day that it’s probably pretty rare to be so filled with fondness upon seeing someone shimmy so embarrassingly to “I Kissed A Girl.”

“Who’s coming?” Claude yells over the music.

“Both of us in about half an hour if you’re good for it!”

Claude doesn't dignify that with a response. He just takes his shirt off as he's heading up the stairs, and the abrupt disruption of the music mid-chorus says all he needs to hear.

Kent follow him up the stairs two at a time, and Claude wonders if he'll ever get bored of the way Kent just drops to his knees like it's the most exciting thing he's ever done, looking up at Claude with that endlessly infuriating smirk before he starts bossing him around. "Can you--"

"Pull your hair, I know."

"Don't ruin the mood," Kent says, before he's got his mouth too full to talk and Claude is too gut-punched by the intensity of it to keep thinking.

-

The party happens on a Monday for no reason Claude can glean other than that’s the day everyone decided they could move things around for in order to accommodate a last-minute trip to Las Vegas.

It’s not BYOB but it’s not really formal either. It reminds Claude mostly of a crowded bar, or what a frat house might be like with more adults in it. Claude spots the usual suspects as well as some unexpected faces, and then as night is falling Ovechkin arrives with Backstrom in tow, grinning hugely. He’s got a jeroboam of champagne and is wearing jeans that are more hole than denim. Nicky is wearing an orange polo shirt and the worst khakis Claude has ever seen.

“Clode!” Ovechkin yells over Kent’s party mix, which is currently blasting a remix of Cher’s Life After Love. “Orange boyfriend is orange husband!” He hands Claude the gigantic bottle, elbowing him conspiratorially and nearly sending him flying into the sideboard. “Nicky is dress for occasion.”

“I was coerced,” Nicklas says evenly, as though anything in all the world could coerce him into doing something he didn’t want to, except maybe contractually mandated NHL promotion.

“How?” Claude asks, debating asking someone else to open the bottle.

“I was persuaded with sex.” Nicky holds his hand out. “I’ll need that back, actually. I have plans for it.”

Claude hands it back and peacefully decides it’s time for more beer.

-

“Everyone thinks I hate parties,” Sidney gripes. “It's like nobody remembers that time someone gave me a beer facial on camera.”

Kent is neck deep in the pool with a cocktail umbrella behind his ear and a pleasing buzz under his skin that’s half booze and half the fact that Sidney is in the pool and already wasted, floating fully-clothed on a pool lounger Claude contributed for the occasion which is shaped like a massive set of boobs. “Would you like another one?”

“Sure.” Sidney still sounds like someone is about to give him a prostate exam, but on the other hand, he doesn’t even choke when Kent pours half his beer down his throat, letting the runoff go down the sides of his face into the pool water.

“You started without me?” Claude is sitting on the edge of the pool watching them, feet in the water and a beer in each hand. He’s got a curly straw which Kent immediately resolves to steal.

The music is blasting from the house and people are yelling over it. Kent thinks he saw Andre dancing with Clara and Jeff, which would be the world’s most hilarious threesome. Wayne Simmonds is holding court at the beer pong station where Kent assumes most people will end up, showing off the results of an impressive off-season skincare regime and sporting an eight-pack. Hell, even some of Claude's buddies showed.

Kent is suddenly suffused with contentment, and it’s more than half real. In fact, it’s almost all real, every weird golden bubble of it. Kent swims lazily over to where Claude is laughing at him and reaches for one of his beers. “It’s my birthday.”

“No it’s not.”

“My birthday can be any day. This is America.”

“You’re drunk,” Claude says, handing him the one with the straw in it.

“Yes,” Kent agrees. “Come be reckless with me, we’ll turn Sid grey faster.”

“I heard that!” Sidney mutters. “You’re always talking behind my back and I don’t appreciate it.”

Kent leaves Claude for a second specifically to swim over and tip him off the boobs.

Sidney surfaces spluttering, and Kent decides he has enough goodwill in his heart to kiss him, even though he’s kind of a dickhead. He’s here, in Las Vegas, along with a score of their friends and colleagues, and frankly the whole thing has left Kent a little breathless.

“I can’t believe you came,” Kent says, half joking, when Sidney pushes him away for air. His lips are pink, as are his cheeks, but that could also be Kent’s neon porch lights and the glowsticks someone (Andre) threw all over the yard. Either way, it looks good with the water in his hair and beading on his absurd eyelashes.

“He hasn’t come yet,” Claude points out, from the edge of the pool.

“Asshole,” Sid mutters.

“I know.” Kent grins at him.

“You two deserve each other,” Sid says, not entirely derisively, and Kent is so shocked he almost forgets to dunk him in obligatory retaliation.

-

It's probably not as late as it feels when Backy comes up to him and silently douses him in the face with champagne from a huge bottle, grinning like a demon. It's a good thing Kent is still in swim trunks and only in the process of staggering towards the kitchen for a snack when he's interrupted by a ring of intent-looking people in various stages of intoxication, including a shirtless Andre wrapped around half of Wayne, who is fully clothed but is wearing Sidney’s yellow crocs like they’re not a biohazard on par with his awful jock.

“That's a waste of good booze!” Kent splutters.

“I promised revenge if you didn't marry Andre,” Nicky says, managing to sip from the end of a jeroboam while looking only slightly ridiculous. “I meant it.”

“No you didn't,” Kent says, sure he’d interpreted that correctly the first time around. “You were just fucking with me because you’re evil!”

“If that’s what lets you sleep at night.” Nicky holds out the bottle. “Here.”

Kent’s arms aren’t long enough to manage so Backy holds it up for him with an assist from Clara, who is wearing one of Kent’s jerseys and sky-high heels. It tastes like shit because it’s champagne and the mouthful Kent gets is mostly foam. It’s still great. “I can’t believe you all showed up.”

Clara whistles piercingly at him with two of her fingers stuck in her mouth like she used to when he lived with Jeff and he’d left dishes in the sink. “Believe it, you idiot. We love you.”

“Speak for yourself,” Backy says. “I’m taking this.” He disappears with the champagne before Kent has a chance to respond, which is good, because he has nothing to say, all of it trapped on the back of his tongue by the force of Clara’s enthusiastic hug, mashing his face forcibly into her chest in a way that reminds him of being eighteen again, but for once it’s the kind of nostalgia that doesn’t leave him ready to run.

When she releases him he’s out of breath and his chest hurts, but it’s easy to catch Andre’s eye. “Hey, want to help me and Claude drown Sid until he has a boner?”

“I’ll do it,” Wayne says. “Who doesn’t love a fear boner?”

-

“No, come on, you have to turn over or we won’t fit.” Claude pulls back, surveying the chaos.

Kent’s bed isn’t big enough for five people, a fact he has not until now really needed to accept. “I don’t want to. You turn over.”

“The cracks appear,” Wayne says, as though he’s narrating a nature documentary. “Here we see the marriage in freefall, all because--”

“I’ll bottom,” Kent says, exasperated. “I just want to look at you while it happens!”

“This would be a bad time to say--”

“Don’t,” Claude warns Andre.

“That’s what she said?”

“Is he twelve?” Sid asks, spread out like a starfish on his stomach, taking up fully half the bed with his width.

“Roll over,” Kent orders. “Your ass is not the star of this show.”

“Yes it is,” Sid mutters, but he does as he’s told, because Claude curses and hauls him over onto his side, and for once Kent’s flashbacks to the Olympics are not even remotely about losing in the elimination round.

He always forgets that the things which are easy can also be the important ones, the kind that end with Claude laughing into his neck and a case of the spins that have only a little to do with alcohol sweeping him off to sleep.

-

When the party is over, Kent has a moment between waking up and everyone leaving when he realises his house is never going to be the same.

None of that is evident right then, though, because Claude, Sid, Wayne and what looks like the very top of Andre’s bedhead are all crashed out in Kent’s bed and the debris of the party seems very distant over how perilously fucking hot it is.

Kent pushes Claude’s hair out of his face and slips out of bed for a breather.

The bathroom is clear of bodies, and the hall too, but only because the piles of half dealt-with debris from his abortive attempt at cleaning are taking up most of it. He’s surprised nobody fell off the balcony into the entrance hall and broke an arm.

There are people sleeping on every surface. He steps over Clara, asleep on the thick throw rug she pretends to loathe with her head on Jeff’s thigh, and tiptoes hungoverly into the kitchen, easing the door closed behind him.

Backy is staring at the coffee machine in consternation. “This is a monstrosity,” he says. “You’re a millionaire, there’s no excuse.”

Kent reaches past him and presses the button. It starts burbling in its usual slightly reluctant way with no further protest. “Aren’t you supposed to be a genius?”

Backy huffs at him. “I liked it better when you were terrified of me.”

“I’m still terrified of you, I’m just too hungover to deal with it.”

Backy nods like all is back in its place and resumes his staring. From the side he looks even more like a weird elf than from the front. That’s what happens when someone is too symmetrical. “Are you happy?” he asks, when the pot is about half full and the kitchen is beginning to smell like coffee grounds. He times it for when Kent is weak, because he’s evil.

Kent hands him a mug. “I don’t know. I’m hungover, I can’t tell.” Backy, the heathen, takes the pot out of its hole while the coffee is still dripping and pours two cups before putting it back. “Man, now it’ll smell all burned.”

“Your house smells like tequila. It will be fine.”

“Now it smells like tequila and burnt coffee.”

“I’m going outside,” Backy informs him. “Come with me.”

Kent grumbles but as he’s dumping cream in his coffee and enjoying the way Backy does the same with a total lack of grace he realises he might be. Happy, that is. He’s too old to party like this and roll away in the morning like he hasn’t lowkey poisoned himself and he’s too old to be giggling to himself in front of his fridge while one of his oldest opponents teases him, but it feels okay. Even if his head is starting to pound in time to his heart, he’s doing all right.

They tiptoe their way to the back patio. Kent grabs a pair of sunglasses off a side table. He has no idea whose they are but from their size they might be Clara’s. Immediately the green haze they provide makes him queasy, but he’s grateful anyway when they get outside.

Backy sits cross-legged on one of Kent’s wicker couches, feet tucked neatly under his knees. Kent flops into the nearest sun lounger after dragging it into the shade. It’s already roasting out, but there’s a hint of a breeze. Kent thinks maybe he could convince himself it’s worth getting wet and dive into the pool if it gets really dire.

“So,” Backy asks. “What are you going to do with the money?”

“Are you petitioning me?”

“I’m asking.”

“I don’t know. Give it to charity, probably.” He chuckles, then regrets it. “Reverse wedding present.”

“Good for you.” It only comes out semi-sarcastically.

Kent wonders if Nicky’s okay, alarmed at the level of sincerity emerging from him. “Are you dying?”

“Not more than usual. Your coffee is terrible. Is it possible to die of heartburn?”

“Who are you and what have you done with Nicklas?” Kent asks, only semi-sarcastically. “Are the lizards inside your skinsuit letting someone new operate your mouth?”

“Alex and I are retiring,” Backy says, looking out at Kent’s view of the golf course, squinting at the third hole. He glances at Kent, starting to smirk like the Nicklas Kent knows and fears. “All the lizards are in agreement. It’s time.”

“We’ll miss you,” Kent admits, grudgingly. “Did I ever thank you for the revenge spiral?”

“No,” Backy says. “It’s not necessary. Let us never speak of it again.”

Kent laughs at him. Backy endures it, calmly sipping his purportedly-terrible coffee. Kent’s headache catches up with him on his second breath, blooming like a wound from an icepick behind his eyes. “Fuck, I’m so hungover.”

“Words for your tombstone.”

“Yours can be “no comment.”” They lapse into silence, and Kent realises that he’s a little sad too, actually. It seems odd that people are moving on, that he’s still in his twenties by the skin of his teeth but feels older somehow, that half the people who came all the way to Vegas to laugh at him are actually friends he might not see for a while. “It’s not gonna be the same without you. Who’ll threaten me when Andre hits on me?”

“I’m sure we can work something out.” Nicky has always had weirdly perfect teeth for a hockey player, even if half of them are fake. They’re all in evidence when he smiles at Kent, and for once the sight does not fill Kent with mortal terror. Kent is still musing on the awkward revelation that Nicky is kind of hot from a certain angle minus the deterrent of fear when Nicky says “you’re okay, you know. If you manage not to die of alcohol poisoning you’ll be a hall-of-famer. But there’s life after, I think.”

Kent is speechless for a second, robbed of the ability to produce sound. He can’t even clear his throat, convinced the pressure in the back of his gorge might reach up like a fist and choke him.

“Don’t tell anyone I’m nice,” Backy says acidly, when Kent fails to respond. “Nobody will believe you, anyway.”

Kent covers his discomfiture with his mug, grinning so widely he thinks his face might crack before he gets himself under control. “Do you want an aspirin?”

“Get me three,” Nicky counters. “And a benadryl. Fuck your dust. You live in hell.”

“Hell is a hospital waiting room,” Kent says, but he’s still smiling when he goes.

-

Epilogue

-

“So, are you going to hire new cleaning people?” Claude asks Kent, when the debris from the party is starting to look like a feature, not a bug. They’re sharing a huge Bloody Mary for breakfast, because as usual Kent has no fucking food.

“I’ll blow you in the shower if you do it for me.”

“Your pitch needs work.”

“So you don’t want a blowjob?”

“I want a divorce,” Claude says. “This is exploitation.”

Kent doesn’t even look up from his phone, plucking the glass out of Claude’s hand. “No you don’t.”

Claude sighs. “No, I don’t.” He really doesn’t.

**Author's Note:**

> somewhere offscreen the author is staring at herself in the mirror wondering what she's doing with her life
> 
> endless thanks to the dirtbags, and also to everyone I have foisted this on, mostly unwillingly, but some of you I brainwashed.


End file.
